Intro

Howdy everyone! Welcome to “The Daily Crushers”. You know since this is a new site, I can’t say I have a lot of “Everyones”, and I really hate all the PC correct stuff so I don’t use guys or gals or try to sound phony by saying some too gender neutral. So, there I go… into the rabbit hole by even mentioning it. So, you may see me mention some of the old standards, and these are not representative of gender, just that’s what they are. I have a mailman deliver my mail. Yes, my mailman is a woman. When I go to a car dealer, there are salesmen trying to sell me a car. Yes, some are women.

Daily Crushers

So this gives me a place where I can explain why my sites name is plural. The Daily Crushers really is based on a book by Gary Vaynerchuk called Crush It. It is based on Gary, over a period of 7 years, increasing his fathers Liquor Store business from 4 million gross to 50 million. A very inspiring book. So, a name originally started by some entrepreneurs I met about 8 years ago had used the name, “Daily Crushers”, for some of their marketing. They have long since abandoned it so I’m now carrying the mantle. But my use is double fold. I live on a street called Daily Rd. I have family members as well as myself who are involved in entrepreneurial endeavors who live the Daily Crushers credo.

We all try and advance those entrepreneurial endeavors daily in some fashion. But in a lesson, I learned from Jim Rohn, is that you can’t be successful in business while living in a bubble or vacuum. You have to involve others. So, the few people I do work with, are on my Crusher Team. We even have another website, Crusher University, where we train new team members. So, even though you may not have subscribed here at The Daily Crushers yet, I’ll still consider you on my Team. But you are going to have to actually “Team Up” with me in some way to have access to Crusher University.

So there ya go, I’m going to reference you all as “Team” and/or “Crushers” and/or “Crusher Family.”

Clouds and Dirt

The title of this post is “Clouds and Dirt”. It is a chapter name of Gary Vaynerchuk’s, (reffered to as Gary Vee), booked called #AskGaryVee. Some say it’s his best book ever. “Clouds and Dirt” is the title for chapter 1. So, what I’m going to do is each day, go through each chapter, pull out some of the highlights, (as defined by me), I think are important, and then some retrospection of what and why, and how they affect me personally. I think this will be fun.So, the items you see in quotes are Gary’s.

Gary also tells his 300+ staff that 99% of what they deal with
in business doesn’t matter. He points out that by focusing on a few core high
level business philosophies, everything else will fall into place.

Those high-level business philosophies are:

1. Bring value to the customer.

2. Provide 51 percent of the value in a relationship, whether it’s with an employee, a client, or a stranger.

3. Always play the long game of lifetime value.

4. Smart work will never replace hard work; it only supplements it.

5. People are your most important commodity.

6. Patience matters.

7. Never be romantic about how you make your money.

8. Try to put yourself out of business daily.

Down in the trenches.

Because these are high level, he calls them clouds. They are the axioms that steer all of his business concerns. Then we have what he refers to as the “Dirt”. The dirt is about being someone who practices and executes towards those clouds. It’s the hustling. It’s the hard work. If you don’t know by now, Gary’s philosophy is that, if you can’t do the hard work, your business will fail.

So Gary spends his time in the Clouds or Dirt. There is not a lot of middle area he concerns himself with.

I can offer you that will change the entire trajectory of your career, it’s to start pushing on both edges. Raise the bar on your business philosophy, dig deeper into your craft. You want to be an equally good architect as you are a mason. You’ve got to be able to simultaneously thing at a high level and get your hands dirty.

Finally, when asked, “What would you prioritize as a
one-person business?”

Cash. It is the oxygen of your business. … So your first priority is sales because it generates cash, and cash is what allows you to do everything else.

Your business isn’t that much different form a human body. It will run on sugar and caffeine. It will run even better if you give it water, vegetables, and a workout. But it won’t last five minutes without oxygen.

Retrospective

Family first is really who you are doing everything for anyway. So this is not just your wife/husband and children. It is mother, father, brothers, sisters, uncles, cousins, in-laws, etc. And yes, you are going to have tiffs and disagreements about things, but if you do start working with relatives beside your spouse, if you know that going in, and have a discussion on how things will get resolved in case you do run into issues, you should not have a problem. I kind of figure in general, that if you have two or more people who are working towards crushing, for the same goals, and are actually doing the dirt, I don’t think there will be as much disagreements that you can’t handle both quickly and easily. But hey, I don’t know your brother in law.

So as to the clouds and dirt portion, I know I don’t nearly spend enough time in the dirt. As mentioned somewhere else in #AskGaryVee, people are trying to automate their dirt. That is they are relying on computers, technology, or simply others to do that hard work. Well, that’s a lot of what I try and do. I have an engineering background and spent a good part of my career doing just that. Engineering and automating redundancy and boring tasks that saved companies a lot of time.

But when I think about it, prior to working in the technology sector, I was the one who was working in finance and insurance who did all the grunt work. I figured that I had some perspective because I can’t tell you how many thousands and thousands of hours year after year, I pushed paper. So I finally decided, I was going to automate my job. I did very well at it. It was a smooth and lucrative jump into the technology and I actually had one over all my other co-workers. I had spent the time in the trenches and intuitively knew what people were expecting when it came to designing systems that would help automate many of their jobs.

This worked fine and dandy for a career in technology, but not so much in an entrepreneurial setting, especially if it was yours. In the cases mentioned above, I had spent the time in the grind. As an entrepreneur, not so much. What I need to do is be patient. (See Gary’s #6 axiom above, Be patient.) By not getting those thousands of hours dealing with people, customers, prospects, etc. , with a detailed plan of action on how to go about getting that experience as fast as possible, it’s a challenge.

I am fortunate in that what we teach regarding getting this experience in Crusher University, is using technology to its fullest, but only to the point of any interaction with people has to be done the old fashion way, by talking, and typically on the phone. Automation is helping with all the things in between talking to a live person. So instead of getting experience with people a dozen a day or so, we can get that to several dozen to over 100 a day. That experience comes quick.

Then as a caveat, talking and interacting with more people a day, sales will become higher, and thus income.

Summarily

Chapter 1 is in the can. Again, I thank you for reading The Daily Crushers. I really do think this book can change the way you deal and spend time in any of your existing entrepreneurial endeavors, or help you decide if you are even ready to start one. You can get Gary’s book at Amazon.